World of Warcraft May Be Adding Free-To-Play for 'Veterans'

Blizzard is looking for possible ways to entice seasoned World of Warcraft players back into the fold. These so-called Veteran players would be eligible to be a part of a new type of account called the Veteran Edition, sharing many of the traits and restrictions of the ‘Starter Edition’, both of which are free-to-play up to a certain preset level.

The patch notes for 6.1, the latest iteration of the game, include a new account type called "Veteran Edition" that has similar restrictions to "Starter Edition" accounts -- that is, the free trial account that lets you play the game for free, up to a point.

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Fairly sure "veterans" stopped playing because they just had enough for the game, I mean they were paying a monthly fee to play a game long enough to become "veterans" I'm pretty sure the cost wasn't the issue in the reason they quit. Well unless they did the math one day and went "holy crap I paid $1000 for this game!?"

They should just call it starter edition+ as it really doesn't offer much of anything except the ability to play a starter version on your old account and you can join a guild if you already have a character there.

Yeah, its pretty much useless. I think Blizz is in denial about becoming free to play, but as long as they have many paying customers I guess it makes sense. I think the transition is inevitable though.

Blizz can never entice back the "seasoned veterans" like myself who quite years ago because the game had turned into an unhealthy timesink / addiction. That was my fault, not theirs - but in the end as much as i want to reload the game... i know what the end result will be.

atp1916 said:

Blizz can never entice back the "seasoned veterans" like myself who quite years ago because the game had turned into an unhealthy timesink / addiction.

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I seriously hope this NEVER becomes free to play.

That would be the end for me.

If wow becomes free to play, the game is over. I'd rather they just drop the price to 5 or 10 bucks a month over going free... seriously.

A lot of people play MMO's for the community aspects. This would enable these players who had out grown the game itself to continue to participate in and bolster the community without having to pay for the privilege of communicating with their long time friends. This might be a way to stem losses of larger groups when 1 influential person decides to quit paying.

sfsuphysics said:

Fairly sure "veterans" stopped playing because they just had enough for the game, I mean they were paying a monthly fee to play a game long enough to become "veterans" I'm pretty sure the cost wasn't the issue in the reason they quit. Well unless they did the math one day and went "holy crap I paid $1000 for this game!?"

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As a Verteran, yes, yes the cost was an issue. I counted all the money spent in the game including realm transfers. It's well over $1k for a game that I only logged in to raid 3 times a week for four hours. Also the game went from broken to even more broken in class balance with little or no fixes in sight. The term "next expansion will fix it" was more true than you think.

Also there was nothing to do in the game except casual crap. Pokemon, special holiday events, and daily quests do not a game make. Quit the game because when i did pay, I felt like I had to stay logged in to get my money's worth.

Subscription free is the way it should be.

According to the 6.1 patch notes, the Veteran Edition would also have level and money caps -- although it doesn't specify what those caps are. Also, like Starter Edition accounts, Veteran Edition accounts would not allow modifying calendar events, shouting, whispering to players not in the Veteran's friends list, signing guild charters, inviting other players into groups and several other unspecified features and actions.

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That doesn't sound like Free to play to me. Sounds like no game for me. Or Starter Edition 2.0.

techie81 said:

Yeah, its pretty much useless. I think Blizz is in denial about becoming free to play, but as long as they have many paying customers I guess it makes sense. I think the transition is inevitable though.

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I don't think that's really the case. It's more like a different carrot on a stick. Make the game free to play to try to get some of the players back, but limit it so after time if they want to participate they'll have to go back to being paying subscribers.

Basically, a replacement for the scroll of resurrection system they ditched. With that, a player had to be inactive for 90 days, a subscribed player could send a SoR, if the recipient re-activated their account for a full month(paying), the sender got a mount. Apparently that system didn't accomplish much.

The older version of SoR actually gave the sender a free month if the recipient re-activated their account, the problem there was that enough people had quit playing that some could invite enough people over the course of a year, get them playing for a month, and then they themselves would have a year for free. The problem with that is unless the players keep subscribed for more than a month, Blizzard didn't actually gain anything.

There was also lots of spam from people begging to send their SoR(for the free month, or the mount. Heck, I had co-workers asking me to accept one for ages). This is simply a new attempt at trying to lure former players back, without rewarding current players(or relying on them to beg former players), and give them a taste... so they start paying again.

I stopped playing years ago because it was getting boring.

Merc1138 said:

This is simply a new attempt at trying to lure former players back, without rewarding current players(or relying on them to beg former players), and give them a taste... so they start paying again.

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Exactly, especially with them rewarding "Veteran" players that haven't stopped playing the game since launch. Pretty clear that they lost a substantial amount of subscriptions lately and they want people back.

My guess is they're either 8 million or 7 Million subscribers currently. Nowhere near what WoW needs to be to become free to play. It would have to be 3 - 4 million before Blizzard even considers reducing the price of the monthly fee, let alone free to play.

Even at 3 million subscribers they would make 3x15 = $45 million per month. Some games don't even make that in sales. All for what, to keep a room full of servers running? How does Guild Wars 2 do it then?

Kueller said:

A lot of people play MMO's for the community aspects. This would enable these players who had out grown the game itself to continue to participate in and bolster the community without having to pay for the privilege of communicating with their long time friends. This might be a way to stem losses of larger groups when 1 influential person decides to quit paying.

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I was definitely spending most of my time doing community shit when I played years ago

All the homeless on my way to work are gonna be stoked!

I stopped because each expansion passed TBC was more or less the exact same thing with a shitty story line.

If they had a completely classic server or a classic + TBC I'd pay $5 - $10 monthly for that.

Trimlock said:

I stopped because each expansion passed TBC was more or less the exact same thing with a shitty story line.

If they had a completely classic server or a classic + TBC I'd pay $5 - $10 monthly for that.

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There's free classic servers but illegally running I think.

Ashbringer said:

There's free classic servers but illegally running I think.

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I've tried them. They tried to get the classic feel, even got close but its terribly buggy, the servers are crazy slow and they only support a few hundred players at once.

Good attempt, was even fun for a little while but I'd rather have something more stable and with quite a bit larger player base. The player base is what MMO's fun.

Ashbringer said:

There's free classic servers but illegally running I think.

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Oh and they aren't illegal, they are merely recreating the DB on their own which Blizzard allowed as long as they didn't charge. There was one that did charge and it was very popular for a short time before Blizzard swooped down and dropped a nuclear bomb on it.

Ducman69 said:

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how dare to hack my icloud account

snicker so veteran player who does not have their characters above level 20? When I get stuck trying to keep track of different friends playing on different servers I have lower level characters but if you want to play with your friends I would think you would want your old character to pick up the story where you left off instead of playing through the starter are for the ummtentih time... then again I stopped and started playing so many times that I only know of handful of the people I've played with over the years because we moved games at the same time.